


The Other

by Magestorrow



Category: Bartimaeus - Jonathan Stroud
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Family reunited, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-09 16:56:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16453793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magestorrow/pseuds/Magestorrow
Summary: Nathaniel is reunited with his older sister. She and Bartimaeus bond over teasing him.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Neathra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neathra/gifts).



Her childhood had always been shrouded in a mystery no one ever acknowledged. Her earlier memories were full of instances she couldn't quite explain - of a little baby with eyes as blue as her own, of photographs being thrown into fire, and of distant relatives mentioning a boy that appeared in a handful of her recollections. But, she grew older, she brushed them all off as a combination of dreams, misunderstandings and a childhood friend that had long since moved away.

At least, that was what she _had_ done. 

It had been hard to tell with his short hair, and the way that he acted so different than the bubbly boy of her memories. Yet it was impossible deny that he had features that she saw every time that she looked in the mirror. The same nose. The same eyes. The same pale complexion. The same lanky limbs. The resemblance was so uncanny that if his hair wasn't shaved so short, some might have assumed they were twins if they stood side-by-side.

So she started doing research, digging through old family scrapbooks and calling up relatives she hadn't seen or talked to in years. And, when she had enough of a case, she called up her parents and demanded the truth.

Her suspicions were right.

Her family had once consisted of four people: her mother, her father, herself and a bright-eyed boy named Nathaniel. He had undergone magical testing at the tender age of five, and had been given up to the magicians in charge of their government just shy of his sixth birthday and her eighth. And she was rightfully angry – angry at her parents for being so eager to give up their son, angry at herself for not questioning things sooner, angry at the magicians for taking away her dear little brother, and, most importantly of all, angry that she would never get to call him her family.

Because she knew enough about magicians to understand that true names were forgotten with the families they had come from, and knew enough about people to understand that those desperate enough would seek to use her as leverage if she ever so much as approached him in the street. Nathaniel Lockhart may have been one and the same with John Mandrake, but she would never be able to let him know that.

Besides, he was a magician.

It wasn't like he would have wanted to know anyways.


	2. Chapter 1

**A Year Ago**

He was dying.

It had been one thing to know that he was going to die and another thing to actually be going through the experience. It had seemed like such a heroic thing to do when he dismissed Bartimaeus, but now he found himself wishing he hadn't decided to do it on his own. Death was... _lonely_. He had spent what he assumed were a handful of hours staring up past the broken support beams and through the holes in what had once been an ornate glass ceiling, trying to think of how he was supposed to pass the time until he died. He didn't like how much time he had to think. No matter what he did, he couldn't distract himself – a benefit of the constant working schedule that was required of magicians. He never had to think of the things he'd rather not think about in the first place.

Kitty was out there, somewhere. They had barely known each other, really, but he couldn't help feel a little guilty when he thought of how he had promised that everything would be alright. She was going to be furious at him when he was buried and gone, that was for sure. He let out a broken, shaky sigh – one of his lungs surely was injured in the explosion – and then felt another pang of guilt: poor Bartimaeus would have to bear the blunt of Kitty's anger when he passed on his final message.

(Assuming, of course, Kitty didn't think he was dead, too. Would Bartimaeus have wanted for everyone to think that he was long gone, or would have he wanted to at least speak to Kitty one more time? They might have shared bodies, but that was something that Bartimaeus hadn't felt the urge to share.)

Bartimaeus would probably be furious at him, too. He'd rant about him for days and days, saying how stupid his last master was for letting him go when they were both supposed to die – why had Bartimaeus been so eager to sacrifice himself, too? It wasn't even like the humans had cared about him and his kind. Kitty seemed to. He might have, too, to some extent. But it just didn't make a whole lot of sense when Nathaniel thought through it all.

The lighting was beginning to change. He watched the colors of sky blur together through broken shards of glass, and he shifted as he watched what he was sure would be his final sunrise. It was sad that things would end like this. He knew so much of John Mandrake, but so little of Nathaniel-

Nathaniel what? Nathaniel Underwood? Mrs. Underwood may have treated him like he was her son, but he was never truly her family. He was the apprentice of her husband, and it was only through the lenses of adulthood that he understood she could have done more to help – she could have advocated for the childhood he never truly had, and stopped her husband from treating him so harshly.

He had another name out there – a name that could have been his if he had been born without potential, if he had had loving parents who didn't want to throw their son away just for a big paycheck. A sob suddenly took him by surprise, shaking his already weak body as big, fat tears began to roll down his cheeks. He didn't even know his own name! How pathetic was that? Kitty Jones knew her own name. Bartimaeus knew his, too. But all he knew was that he was a Nathaniel among many Nathaniels, and he didn't even know the names of the people who had given it to him. 

His life had never been fair, but not knowing his own identity was perhaps the cruelest bit of it all. As the sun began to rise in the sky, Nathaniel closed his eyes and wished that, if reincarnation was truly a thing, he could end up with a family after he drew his final breath.

**xXx**

But Nathaniel didn't draw his final breath that day.

He drew many, many breaths than that, though some were noticeably more shaky than the others. Kitty, for reasons neither one of them would ever truly know, was suddenly overcome with the urge to continue the search for the missing John Mandrake. They renewed their attempts with vigor, and managed to find him as he was unconscious on death's doorstep. Kitty was there in the hospital room when he finally woke up – he had been unconscious for nearly three weeks, slowly healing from injuries.

She had been terrified of the possibility that Bartimaeus had died while Nathaniel lived, and had simply been waiting for Nathaniel to awaken so she could get a straight answer instead of waiting for a djinni that would never appear in his pentacle. So he told her everything he could – as fast as he could – making sure to leave out nothing about the final battle that had occurred. She was understandably furious that he had been planning on risking his life in the way he had, but she pushed that anger aside for another day and helped him hobble out of his bed.

Together, they drew the pentacle needed to summon Bartimaeus. Kitty had to draw most of the lines. Even though she was frail because of her time in the Other Place, Nathaniel's hands shook far too much for him to do it correctly. They stood together and waited for their friend to appear. Because, after all they had been through together, how could they not be friends? And when Bartimaeus finally did appear, the two came to the unanimous, silent decision to step out of their pentacles before Bartimaeus even had a chance to register that Nathaniel was alive and well.

That marked the beginning of his time as Nathaniel.

John Mandrake gently faded into the background of London's politics, Nathaniel far more focused on regaining his strength through physical therapy and frequent visits to the doctor. It was Kitty who took the political stage in light of the uprising, and she did so with the gusto that everyone who knew her would have expected. She had always dreamed of reform, after all.

As Kitty was off dealing with the politics of a new era, Bartimaeus and Nathaniel found themselves spending more and more time together. They had always spent a good majority of their time interacting with each other because of their relationship as magician and spirit, but the time they spent together was _different_. With Kitty busy for most of the early days of Nathaniel's recovery, it was Bartimaeus who stepped up to the plate and made sure he got everywhere he needed to be. It was bizarre at first, but he soon came to enjoy the time he spent with Bartimaeus in the waiting rooms of doctor's offices – the djinni had countless stories to tell of his many exploits, and he was a surprisingly good storyteller. (Though Nathaniel did suspect that Bartimaeus exaggerated on several accounts he gave.) 

It was while Bartimaeus was telling him of a story about the time he met Solomon that Nathaniel suddenly remembered the desperate wish that seized him as he lay dying in the Glass Palace. He waited for Bartimaeus to finish the story, and then proposed what would have once been a preposterous idea: he wanted to track down his family. His parents, despite now living in a different country, were the easiest to track down. Their names had been written down years ago when he had been given up to the magicians, even if they weren't associated with him in particular in the records.

His mother was Elizabeth Lockhart. His father was Jake Lockhart. He thought over this names and imagined what they could look like for the longest time, and was slightly disappointed when he finally saw pictures. But when he finally got his hands on the treasured family pictures – it took some bribing on his part – he discovered that Nathaniel Lockhart wasn't their only child. In the few pictures he gathered, there was always another one. 

Her name was Ella Lockhart.

With his parents in another country, it was Ella that would be the easiest to meet. But she had seemingly fallen off the face of the earth after leaving their parents, and it quickly became apparent that finding her current place of residence was going to be harder than expected. Still, he became increasingly dedicated to finding the family he had spent the past months dreaming of. Bartimaeus assisted in the search, and Kitty did as well when she wasn't busy running the country. They spent hours pouring over books and records together, chatting and becoming closer in ways they would have never expected.

He had been looking for a blood family, but he quickly came to realize that sometimes family didn't have to share the same lineage. A family could very well be a commoner, a magician and a spirit who just happened to be very, very close friends. 

When they finally found a lead on where Ella was, they jumped on it. Kitty was far too busy with political affairs to take part in the last leg of the endeavor, but Bartimaeus and Nathaniel had seemingly endless amounts of time on their hands. Bartimaeus offered to head out and find out more about the woman they were sure was her; Nathaniel used the time to prepare for the inevitable reunion. 

Ella Lockhart was a teacher now. She worked in a school around the corner from her apartment, and frequently had someone named Beth over. She was apparently very well-liked by her students, though she did have a penchant for messing with them. Every time he learned something new about her, he grew even more eager to meet her – he was finally beginning to paint a picture of his older sister. It grew to a point where there could no longer be any uncertainty about the Ella Lockhart they had found.

It was then that he decided to finally meet her.

Armed with nothing except himself and Bartimaeus, he made his way to the section of London that she lived in. It was a brisk fall day, and he tried his best to dress for both the weather and the good first impression he wanted to make. Ella wouldn't know who the stranger on her doorstep was, and to be turned away before he even had a chance to explain himself would have been heartbreaking. 

The meeting hadn't started in the way that he had expected it would, but, then again, when did things ever work out as planned? The moment he had agreed to taking Bartimaeus with him, he should have known that things would go spinning out of his control.


	3. Chapter 2

“Your friend is back, Ella,” Beth said. 

Their grade books and assignments were spread across Ella's little old table in the living room; it could barely support the weight of them all, but they trusted it regardless. She was currently tucked into the corner of her couch, surrounded by soft pillows and blankets. A cup of hot cocoa steamed in one hand as she peered up from the essay she had been in the middle of reading. It was Beth who – for once – had decided that she needed to stretch her legs, and had ended up wandering towards the window while taking a break from correcting the seemingly endless slew of tests and worksheets.

Her slender hands were currently resting on the windowsill as she looked out through the glass into the streets only a few stories below. Her nails anxiously tapped the wood. The combination of this and the fact that Ella had few friends besides Beth caused her to put down her hot chocolate and join her by the window.

There, standing out in the streets, was a very familiar boy.

He was dressed in the same outfit as he always was: a plain black t-shirt, a pair of jeans and a pair of untied sneakers. She briefly wondered if his closet was only filled by outfits like that, but quickly pushed the thought aside when she remembered the reason why she was so disturbed by him in the first place. 

He had been stalking her for the past week. 

She had pretended not to notice, but it was hard to ignore him when he kept showing up everywhere she went. The supermarket, her school, the “park” (a poor excuse compared to what she knew the magicians had) and even her own apartment complex – if she was there, he was too. His sudden, frequent appearances had been a bit of joke between her and Beth back when he first started showing up and asking students and staff questions about her, but it had quickly turned far from endearing after the first two days.

And today he had company.

Company who, under close scrutiny, looked frustratingly familiar. She had definitely seen him somewhere before, but couldn't put a name to his face. That may have been because it was hiding behind a long set of dark bangs that he had to keep pushing back, but nothing about him was easy to pinpoint as familiar. He was dressed in an impeccable suit, and a long, formal trench coat. If it wasn't for the fact that he was standing in front of her apartment complex, she might have assumed that he was a magician-

Oh.

She took a deep breath and stepped away from the window.

“Beth?” she questioned. She kept her voice strong. Beth didn't know what she knew to be the truth about her family, and she certainly wasn't going to explain it now. “I think it might be best to call off the grading party for today. I just remembered that I'm supposed to help my neighbor out with something in a bit.”

Beth turned around and stared at her. She was already heading back towards the table, carefully piling all of Beth's things together so her best friend could leave as fast as physically possible. The complex didn't have a working elevator, but the flight of stairs wouldn't take long to climb once the man learned which room she lived in. With the help of her stalker, that wouldn't be hard to discern. 

“But we've got so much to grade-”

“Let's do it tomorrow,” Ella interrupted. If this went the way she expected, she wouldn't be around to get together the next day. But she could hope, and it seemed like it was the best option. If Beth overheard anything, it could put her in danger. She knew enough about magicians to know that, too.

“Okay,” Beth hesitantly said, taking the bag of grading materials that Ella had just shoved in her direction.

And then she was gone.

After the door closed behind her closest friend, Ella slowly sank back into her couch's cushions. Her hot chocolate – now lukewarm – sat forgotten on the ground beside her. She watched the door. She could try running, but magicians had legions of demons at their command. It wouldn't be hard for him to track her down. She'd just have to sit here and face whatever he brought with him when he opened the door.

As if her thoughts had summoned him, she heard a knocking on the door. There was the sound of muttered voices on the other end. She hesitantly rose once more, her footsteps uncertain as she made her way to her door. Her fingers shook when she grabbed onto the doorknob. Could he see it shaking on his side of the door? 

She opened it.

She immediately came face-to-face with the magician. He was standing only a foot away from her, though he took a very large step back when he noticed their close proximity. This was followed by an indignant “Hey!” from behind him. When she looked around his tall, gaunt figure, she was astonished to see her stalker standing right behind the magician. He had his hands casually resting behind his head, though right now he was currently glaring at the magician. Had he been working for the magician all along? Was that why she had been the target of his inquiries, and not because he was infatuated with her? She may have been creeped out by the latter of the two options, but it was the first that sent a chill up her spine. Her life had been in danger for nearly a week and she had been too blind to see it.

She turned her attention back to the immediate threat: the magician. He was currently in the middle of staring at her, so she returned the favor by staring right back at him. This caused him to take yet another step back, bumping into the boy. This time, instead of simply giving an indignant cry, he pushed him straight into the apartment. Ella, who hadn't been expecting the magician to suddenly come barreling in her direction, went crashing to the floor in a tangled mess of her limbs and the magician's.

The boy stepped over the two of them as the magician hurried back to his feet. “Bartimaeus!” he shouted, turning back to the boy with an absolutely furious look on his face. Or maybe he was just embarrassed – it was hard to tell with how red his face was.

Bartimaeus, as the boy was apparently called, gave a small little shrug and made himself at home on her couch. “What?” He mocked a yawn and leaned back into the covers. “You bumped into me. I was just giving you a taste of your own medicine.”

“Getting pushed doesn't-” He let out a sigh and ran his fingers through his hair. As he was doing so, he extended his free hand to her.

She didn't take it.

The hand returned to her side, and it awkwardly hung there for a good moment before he held it back out to her. Once again, she refused to take it, instead joining the boy over by her living room table. He gave her a little wave before going back to watching the magician with an amused look on his face.

“What's wrong, Natty boy?” Bartimaeus asked. “Cat got your tongue? It's her. Not a single other Ella Lockhart looks remotely like her, or matches the description you gave me.” 

The magician's eyes widened at the comment, though he didn't seem furious like he had before. His eyes weren't wide with anger – they were wide with fear. He was absolutely petrified upon hearing the words just uttered. As if to further confirm her assumption, his skin somehow managed to turn into an even lighter shade of pale, and he set his lips into a thin little line.

But what could have possibly called for such a reaction? He was a magician. He was supposed to be ruthless and cold and everything one would expect from a stereotypical villain. (His appearance certainly fit the bill.) A villain wasn't supposed to be terrified when their associate – grunt? apprentice? kid he found on the street and paid to help him out? – revealed their evil plan, and certainly wasn't supposed to get upset over what had to be a nickname-

She stared at the magician in front of her.

“ _Nathaniel?_ ”


	4. Chapter 4

**A Month Later**

So now Ella had a brother.

It had been one thing to dream of someday meeting him, but the actual act of spending time with him was vastly different than expected. For one thing, it involved far more medical visits than she had anticipated – Nathaniel, apparently, had been the one responsible for the Glass Palace crashing to the ground during the Spirit Rebellion. She still hadn't gotten a full story on that, though Bartimaeus had hinted at playing a major role in it as well.

(And by hinted, she meant that he had made it as clear as he could without stating it. There had been far too many references to Nathaniel's stupidity in what they “had assumed to be his final moments” for him not to have been there too, though she didn't quite understand how Bartimaeus could escape unscathed.)

Being Nathaniel's sister meant dealing with everything that came with having a brother who had formerly been a magician, too. There were all the strange characters who kept showing up on his doorstep whenever she was visiting – the most startling of all so far being Kathleen Jones, upstart commoner magician and apparent close friend of Nathaniel. She had nearly fainted on the spot when she had seen Kitty standing there when she went to go open the door.

But while meeting her personal hero was an experience that she ranted about to Beth for nearly an hour, it was the time she spent with Bartimaeus and Nathaniel that she came to treasure most. After their initial meeting, it had become quite clear that she had been wrong about the boy she had been convinced was stalking him. He was a djinni, and apparently had known Nathaniel since he was only a little kid. It was now that Bartimaeus reminded her of this once again: the three of them were sitting in his living room, Ella with her papers, Nathaniel with a book and Bartimaeus just staring out at the darkening sky.

“So, Ella, did you know that Natty boy used to sleep with a stuffed animal?” Bartimaeus casually asked from his perch. Ella shook her head, amused, and put her papers down beside her. She rarely got anything graded when visiting here, these days. Bartimaeus simply had been taking too much delight in enlightening her of her brother's exploits during their time together.

Nathaniel slammed his book down.

“I did not,” he indignantly replied.

“I seem to remember otherwise,” Bartimaeus said, an absolutely malicious look on his face as he continued talking. “I vaguely remember one incident where said stuffed animal slipped under your bed during the night, and you hugged me out of your drowsy desperation instead.”

His face turned bright red.

“When was this?” Ella asked. From the way that Bartimaeus suddenly brought up the topic, and from how offended Nathaniel was getting by it being referenced, it seemed like it was a fairly recent incident. “It must have been when he was little, right? Maybe twelve or so-” She paused, mused over it for a moment, and then exclaimed with vigor, “Scratch that! I'm betting fourteen.” 

Bartimaeus grinned. “Think a little older.”

“Fifteen?”

“ _Ella_ ,” Nathaniel hissed. “Don't encourage him.”

“No, no, Nathaniel,” she replied. She rested her hand on her chest and said in an absolutely solemn voice, “It's my duty as your older sister to learn everything I possibly can about you.”

Nathaniel picked his book up, hid his face behind it and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “bullshit” as he tried to ignore the two mercilessly teasing him only a handful of feet away.

Bartimaeus hoisted himself up onto the windowsill and gave her a toothy grin. “Ella Lockhart, you are currently one of my favorite humans,” he informed her, crisscrossing his legs and carefully rearranging his loincloth. “And, for your absolutely necessary desire to learn more about your precious baby brother, the incident in question happened last week.”

Nathaniel responded to the giggling that immediately erupted from Ella by grabbing the pillow closest to him and chucking it at her face – only she managed to duck _just_ in time, leaving Bartimaeus to be the receiver of the flustered magician's attack. 

“I take back what I said,” Bartimaeus said. He grabbed the pillow, readied it with the careful precision that only came with being around for five thousand years, and threw it right back in Ella's direction. But while he may have had experience on his side, she had luck on hers, and she easily dodged that attack as well.

The pillow went slamming into Nathaniel's face.

The book lay forgotten on the couch as he grabbed an assortment of pillows and began to throw them at both his sister and the djinni. And, naturally, the two had to follow suit. Chaos reigned free. Pillow after pillow was thrown in every possible direction, and, by the time that their impromptu pillow fight had ended, they had all ended up on opposite sides of the room, ducking behind the nearest piece of furniture to shield themselves from anymore possible attacks. 

_This_ was what it meant to be Nathaniel Lockhart's sister.

And, as they all emerged from their hiding spots, she knew that nothing would bring her quite as much joy as spending time with her magician brother and djinni best friend. 


End file.
